


Tabula Purpureus

by Labradoodles_and_Muffins



Series: Scraps [1]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Cancelled fic, Child Abuse, F/M, I took Russian Boss comments from SR3 and ran with them as canon for Mariya, Past Child Abuse, Post-Gat Out of Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 06:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6843799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Labradoodles_and_Muffins/pseuds/Labradoodles_and_Muffins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world resets and everyone forgets.</p><p>Except when they don’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Saint, Ascending

The world resets and everyone forgets.

Except when they don’t.

When he’s a kid they tell him he has an active imagination. Later, when he speaks of being older and meaner, shell casings at his feet and so much blood they look concerned and send him to a therapist. The therapist is less concerned, probably because of how much he insists he wants to stop bad people like that and how he tells them he’s been playing football more to stay in shape for police training even though he’s only 8. 

Eventually he grows up, joins the police force, and tries to forget about the too-real dreams of knives and aliens, the beautiful woman who lost her head to save his life and the living storm of a Russian who helped him claim vengeance for that.

He never forgets the feeling of loyalty, of how the dream-man would literally walk into Hell for his friends. For all he tries to stay away from the violence that’s one part of the dream-man (it’s him he knows, a different him who grew up in a different world with a different life) he tries to keep the loyalty. It becomes the most well known thing about him, the otherwise almost enigmatic cop, that he’s loyal to the grave and beyond.

But facts cannot be hidden as dreams forever. They have a habit of demanding to be seen, refusing to be ignored forever. It’s Kinzie who brings it all together which makes sense in hindsight but it’s still not where he’d have laid his bets. He catches sight of her one day, cross-legged and typing during an academy seminar she’s supposed to be paying attention to. It’s a forgettable sight and he’d have packed it away as just another coincidence except he sees the heavy book on multiverse theory sticking out of her bag and the way she looks up and goes from bored to excited when she sees him standing there.

She’s never tried denying it, he learns. The memories were just another one of those things she accepts, like aliens and the fact that the government is spying on everyone all the time (they really are, he’s seen the flimsiest excuse for warrants get approved and he won’t allow any electronics in the room if he’s changing, just in case. Later he’ll think he might just have picked up a few habits from Kinzie-Before). For all her uncertainty in social matters she’s so completely certain and calm about this that he finds he doesn’t panic even slightly, not even with the realisation that the Zin are probably still going to attack in a decade or so. 

She’s not totally right about what’s happening - she thinks it’s a case of one universe leaking into another, not a reset - but from what he can piece together he’s the only one that was there for the final conversation, the only one who would remember. She quite happily runs her FBI application through a shredder and then declares that she’s coming to work for him because he’s part of the only team who were ever nice to her in the “other” universe. He knows better than to question this declaration, having seen what she can do with a laptop. It’s not his decision, he’s still a beat-cop, but the Chief’s got no problem with snagging one of the brightest technological minds of the generation for the Stilwater PD.

After Kinzie he starts paying attention, watching for everyone else. He’s missed his chance with Aisha this time around; she’s already an international superstar. It doesn’t hurt as much as he expected it to, though it does still hurt a little. It’s a wound that’s had time to heal, more than a life time separating them now. He sends her flowers just once, anonymously, with congratulations on the little card and leaves it at that. He’s already had to lose her too many times (for real and all those years on a loop trapped inside a shitty old-school arcade game and oh how he wishes he could have forgotten that), he won’t risk it happening again. 

Troy’s still a cop which worries him more than it should. He’s not a Saint this time but Johnny still feels the old loyalties. He’s torn between his loyalty to the force and to the Saints but Troy’s not undercover right now and saying anything if he does go under is going to look suspicious. Hell, Troy might not even remember anything - not everyone does. 

There’s no articles about past lives or dream lives, unless you go digging deep into conspiracy theorist turf and even those are wrong, just people claiming they were Cleopatra (why is it always Cleopatra) or that their ‘second sun rising coincided with mercury’ and now they’re psychic. Or something, that shit just gives him a headache. He thinks he’s found a few when he Kinzie shows him a chatroom where people are talking about it. 

A few hours of digging and he finds out that these people are Asha (using the handle of JaneBond), Kinzie (handle: NiceSocksNSAAgentBurke, he feels sorry for NSA Agent Burke who does actually exist and has a pair of Snoopy socks (1998 Christmas gift from his wife, pictures on his Facebook page)), and someone who talks like a 10 year old and uses the handle XxCyberxxGodxX. That one’s Matt, he doesn’t need Kinzie to tell him that. 

But no one outside of the old Saints who were on the Zin ship seems to remember. He compares notes with Kinzie and Asha online and it becomes clearer. He remembers the most, up to and including talking to God. Then it’s Kinzie, who remembers fighting Satan and saving The Boss but not much after that. Asha brings up the rear, remembering the Boss getting kidnapped but everything after that is kind of hazy. 

Asha beats them both to the conclusion, which rankles with Kinzie but she lets it slide. Everyone else who survived the Zin probably remember the same as her except, perhaps, the Boss who may remember more, being directly involved, or may not, being as she was encased in crystal. 

This is going to be a problem.


	2. Devil, Diving

The world resets and everyone forgets.

Except when they don’t. 

Her mother takes her to the range for the first time when she’s five. Later she boasts about how her daughter was “born knowing how to shoot”, the massacred targets taken home and kept as trophies. It even earns her a reprieve where she gets a week without having to fight the dogs for dinner. An unspoken arrangement is reached; she gets one extra week for every show of skill in violence and deception. She gets a lot of weeks. 

She’s lonelier this time. She never bothers trying to make friends at school or in the neighbourhood. She clings to the memory of purple shirts, mirrored glasses, the out-of-place FBI hoodie. Her teachers all speak about how surprised they are that someone so young already knows they want to go to college, in Russia, to study literature and Jane Austen. 

Sometimes Social Services shows up, citing reports that she had “cold eyes” which concerned the teachers. They stop coming eventually and she’s something of a ghost story in the teachers lounge, the Russian girl with pigtails and a gap tooth and cold, old eyes. There is a concerted effort to never be in a room alone with her, even if she rarely says anything and has never done anything technically immoral.

Some things go differently this time. She meets Shaundi early, when they’re both young and gangly. Shaundi’s five whole years younger than Mariya which she’d always known but never really put together until fifteen year old her squints down at ten year old Shaundi and thinks she could probably bench press her. 

Mariya’s protective of her, never forgets how much she loved her purple-clad family, but they drift apart when Mariya heads to Russia for college. She doesn’t need to, knowing how it will all end, but she can’t stand the thought of fucking around Stilwater for the next 6 years waiting for Julius to get the Saints together.

She blows up a cafeteria for Christmas, killing the asshole professor who always makes the first years cry, and disappears into the Russian spy networks for 5 years, until she allows the same mistake as before and gets kicked back to Stilwater with nothing but a fake passport and the clothes on her back. It was definitely more fun than withering away in Stilwater and she’s content, despite the holes that wear through her shoes and the fact that she lives in the smallest apartment in the city. 

Shaundi’s out there, waiting, but Mariya thinks she can wait her own damn turn. It’s only 5 years and Shaundi probably enjoyed college, loa dust, and all the exes. Probably didn’t enjoy her first visit to Steelport as much, which makes Mariya flinch in guilt for forgetting, but if her math is right it’s too late for her to do anything. If they ever head back there she’ll make a point of leaving Zimos in the saddle for a bit longer.

Despite all the little changes in her own life she’s too blasé about it. She thinks the changes are insignificant, never stops to consider that maybe others know the memories are real or maybe some of them will decide to heed the warnings of their “dreams”. She’s so focused on getting her life back, maybe fixing a few things here or there, that the giant billboard for “Stilwater’s Own Superstar: Aisha” doesn’t tip her off.

She notices it, thinks ‘nice to see Aisha’s doing well’, and then it gets lost in the plans she’s making, buried beneath long-term ideas and a short-term con she’s running that requires a grenade shaped lemon, two turtles, and her full attention. 

She’s expecting to rejoin the Saints but she doesn’t see it coming. Los Carnales are there but their opponents are in orange, not yellow, and look more like stereotypical white frat boys than the largely black Vice Kings. One of them is wearing socks with sandals. It’s so unexpected that she’s caught up in it before she realises what’s happening and this time she really is in trouble, despite two lifetimes of training, until telltale purple appears to pull her ass out of the fire. 

She heaves herself out the dirt, the same way she’s been doing for decades, and looks up. Julius is there, which is expected and she’s prepared to quash the frisson of anger at the sight of him. She’s not prepared for the other person. There’s no frosted tips this time, no knife-wielding brother-in-arms. There’s a sideways cap and a basketball jersey and no sense of comfort. Julius and Dex both look surprised when she bares her teeth and snarls. 

This is going to be a problem.


	3. Ending, Minus the Middle

He’s pretty sure he didn’t leave the lights on. The glow from the living room is pretty inviting considering how tired he is but not worth dying over. He can see the outline of a figure sitting on his sofa. If the sprawled limbs are anything to go by they’re either not a threat or pretty convinced they can take him. He nudges the front door open with his foot but there’s no extra backup there, no sudden ambush. The sound of the FUZZ presenter flows down through the hall and he hopes it’s a coincidence that it’s the same episode he left off on the last time he was watching.

 

“So what have you been doing with this whole new life?” 

She looks up at him and rolls forward, off the sofa and onto her feet. She looks almost coy but he’s never known her to be capable of anything that close to subtle. 

“Sex, partying, revenge. Sometimes a weird combination of the thr-.”

He kisses her. He’s not made for primary colours, not the red of random, unguided murder or the blue of the force. He’s purple, the same as he’s always been, a mixture no matter which shade he leans the most towards.


	4. All The Bits in Between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of this was cut from the completed chapters for interrupting the flow and was supposed to go in later. Except the Matt bit, I rewrote that entirely.

and Matt...Matt is a 14 year old with scruffy clothes and hunched shoulders. Johnny only even remembers him by accident; he pulls over to break up a fight outside Stilwater High and just happens to recognise the kid in the middle of it all. Johnny’s still built like a brick shithouse and still looks like he’s ready for a fight so the culprits, also scruffy 14 year olds, visibly panic and run away. 

He’s just trying to be nice to the kid before he goes and gets himself mixed up with Loren but Matt goes and gets all heroworshippy over him. The kid still talks a lot - he runs a D&D group called the Deckers, his parents are making him move to Steelport, he’s really good with computers. Johnny takes the slightest bit of advantage by dropping hints about all the cool and really difficult hacking the police get to do - it’s bullshit, Kinzie can do most of it one handed before her first coffee but he’s trying to keep the kid out of a bad situation so he thinks he’s allowed a little artistic license. 

It turns out, all he really had to do was mention that Kinzie Kensington worked for them - even at 14 Matt’s competitive - as that leads to a declaration that anything she can do he can do better and with fewer conspiracy theories. He’s practically sworn a blood-oath to come back to Stilwater when he’s older and join the police and kick her ass by the time Johnny gets him to calm down and think about how much he could do if him and Kinzie actually worked together. 

The Deckers stay as a gaming group, though they expand from strictly tabletop to the “really cool gangster sims” Matt’s been designing and Johnny can only hope that Matt never asks anyone if they’ll call him Johnny during sex. To be sure he emails Matt a few Nyteblade promos. Let that be entirely Josh’s problem.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

King is still running Kingdom Come Records, and was still where Aisha got her start. Something shady is definitely going on there but it’s boardroom-shady and not back-alley shady. While shady, it’s also not even slightly illegal so Johnny’s got no reason to go knocking on those doors. Besides, no one ever built an empire without a little shadow and Ben always was an empire builder. The Vice Kings are a rap group now, originally made up of King, Big Tony, and Warren Williams. King left to set up Kingdom Come and finances the now two-man group.

Johnny keeps a close eye out for Tanya, hoping to thwart her if she starts scheming around King again, until he notices how a lot of the VK’s songs have a similar theme, about a woman who tried to tear them apart but failed. Ben looks that extra bit smug in all of those videos and Johnny knows Ben’s smart enough to listen to dreams when they ring too close to home.

Los Carnales colours still show up in parts of the city and cars in Rollerz blue are frequently ticketed. Orange replaces yellow and it feels jarring and wrong but there’s something about Stilwater that demands either thirds or a single monolith and, if he’s honest, the only colour he wants dominating the entire city is purple. If there has to be one at all. 

He tries to catch old Saints before they go purple, pull them over to his side and collect them, keep them safe. It’s nowhere near as successful a venture as he’d hoped but it’s a mix of good and bad. Pierce is unavailable because he’s already got his music career started, courtesy of, again, Benjamin King. Shaundi he hears stories of, first as the kid with the tragic history and later as the wild but chilled stoner chick who’s slept with everybody and anybody. Kinzie’s safely squirreled away with Stilwater PD, Asha’s probably off doing her thing in England. He ignores Keith; Keith had his acting career long before he got involved with the Saints so he’s probably busy being famous. Besides, Johnny’s not sure he’s going to forgive him for betraying them to Zinyak yet.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
He can tell Pierce remembers because he wears a gold chain with a fleur in all his videos, along with a purple shirt. Kinzie has a UV tattoo of a fleur from when she was 16, her way of showing respect to the memories while still being stealthy. Johnny has one too, on his right thigh. It’s going to be awkward when the Saints show up again, and he’s convinced they will, but it was his one concession to the memories from when he was still pretending they weren’t real.


End file.
